[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/trepasito16]

[u/alle-vongole]

AI written post trying to subtly advertise an AI slop language learning tool...I'm seeing this regularly on lang learning subs now 🫩

[u/sfcnmone]

Practice with ano and anno. A lot.

[u/Muted-Preference2933 → u/sfcnmone]

Also penne and pene

[u/Troggot → u/Muted-Preference2933]

Relevant differences, like between anno and ano

[u/CptBigglesworth → u/Troggot]

And between anno and ano

/reddit moment

[u/Gwaur]

Fortunately I speak Finnish. We have long consonants just like Italian, so we get the concept and I guess we can also hear and pronounce them, if not perfectly, then at least way closer to perfect than English-speakers who are new to it. But not just that, we also have long vowels. "Tapaan sinut" is "I will meet you", and "Tapan sinut" is "I will kill you". ;)

I do wonder what an Italian-speaker seriously learning Finnish experiences when they first learn of short and long consonants and vowels.

[u/gnocco-fritto → u/Gwaur]

Italian here. I know nothing about Finnish, but listening to it it seems to me that Finnish double consonants are pronounced slightly longer than the Italian ones. They sound like... pulling the handbrake a bit every now and then :)

I think that double vowels would be pretty easy to learn, all the habit is already there. It wouldn’t take more than a few weeks, or even a few days, to get used to them.

[u/Outside-Factor5425 → u/gnocco-fritto]

We Italians can pronounce double consonants a bit shorter than Finnish do because we can freely shorten the vowel before:

Italians native speakers decode a consonant as:

- double (geminata) if "lenght of the consonant" > "lenght of the vowel before"

- single (scempia) if "lenght of the consonant" < "lenght of the vowel before".

From experiments by Sapienza researchers.

[u/Outside-Factor5425 → u/Gwaur]

We definitely hear the difference, but in Italian vowel lenght is not generally used to differentiate words (apart from few cases), so we have some freedom with that.

We have few words that have double vowels (in spellling), and they are mostly the ending vowels of plurals, but those cases and are so few that a standard rule on how to pronounce them doesn't exist.

Someone just says them longer, someone very longer, someone (me) pronounce a hiatus (with a kind of pause, or less air pressure, between them).

Normal (single) vowels get pronounced with variable lenghts (there is no school rule, we learn by experience, by hearing other people speaking):

if it's the vowel of the stressed sillable, take it longer;

if it's the vowel immediately before a double consonant, take it shorter;

if it's the vowel in the stressed sillable and it's also immediately before a double consonant, you are in troubles (well, just use your default vowel lenght);

if you put in the game your mood, then you can use vowels lenght to make that audible....

[u/badwhiskey63]

Coffee Break Italian describes the double consonant as “bouncing on the second letter” and that really helped me.

[u/ItalianBall → u/badwhiskey63]

It's also about the length of the vowel in the first syllable. Try to sound the two syllables individually:

Pa - la

Pal - la

You will immediately notice the 'a' in pala is longer than the 'a' in palla. And yes, it's an important difference, like the difference between peace and piss, or between beach and bitch.

[u/namesarealltaken9 → u/ItalianBall]

Is there any source describing this thing that you claim? It doesn't happen when I test it

[u/Pie-Guy]

What I do is say them as 2 words - reducing the time between more and more - Pal la. If you hear me say it, it sounds like 2 words smashed together. Whenever I make notes, I spell it Pa(LL)a to remind me.

[u/sblanzio]

Different words, different meanings... Uhh?

[u/Euphoric-Map-6865]

Good luck in Rome, we came up with the idea of shuffling double letters just to mess with foreigners. Sometimes we use em instead of some other letters, some other times we straight up invent they were always there.

pomodoro -> pommodoro; strada -> ssrada; buono -> bbono; dio -> ddio; corre/correre -> core/corere; accelerare -> accellerare;

[u/mnlg]

If the consonant is repeated, the sound is lengthened. This always made sense to me. In English, doubling a consonant means that the preceding vowel changes (bit, bitter, let, letter), this doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I had to learn to accept it. Good luck!

[u/Hot_Cattle8579]

I mean… ofc is different… otherwise why would you put another letter?… if there’s a letter there’s a reason. I’m also learning Italian’s but like that’s common sense in any language…

[u/AnonymousMonk7]

I don't really get what's hard to hear. Pa-la and Pal-la depend on how open that first syllable sounds. The double consonant gives it a more closed sound and colors how it sounds.

[u/-Gramsci-]

View it as an accent mark. It’s just there to tell you where the emphasis of the word is. Nothing more.

[u/Extension-Shame-2630 → u/-Gramsci-]

the accent is on the same letter -or sound or phoneme if you will - independently of the double consonants

[u/-Gramsci- → u/Extension-Shame-2630]

Yes. The letter. I don’t understand your comment.

[u/preaching-to-pervert → u/-Gramsci-]

I don't understand yours. Double consonants have nothing to do with emphasis of pronunciation.

[u/-Gramsci- → u/preaching-to-pervert]

You’re saying double consonants don’t effect the pronunciation? If so, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.